Hello!
Hi all! Wow, I've been on LJ for ~11 years and this is my very first post 😅. Well, better late then never right?
I first created this LJ to keep up with the Johnny's fandom back when I first got into Arashi in 2010 when I was in middle school. To be honest, I fell out of the fandom for a couple of years but when I heard Arashi was going on hiatus, I started getting hooked again. Arashi was my favorite and they will always have such a special place in my heart ❤️💛💚💙💜 so I was extremely sad when I heard that news. Now with Arashi on hiatus and SMAP, TOKIO, V6, and Tackey & Tsubasa disbanded, all the older groups that I was into are gone with the exception of Kinki Kids. NEWS, KAT-TUN, and Kanjani8 are thankfully also still hanging on despite all the changes they've each gone through. I'm so proud of them!
After Arashi went on hiatus, I decided to check out the newer groups. First of all, when I was first getting back into the fandom around 2018-2019, I was so shocked that Johnny's started an official Youtube account! Like WHAT?! Now there's not only the Johnny's Official Youtube channel, but channels for Johnny's Juniors and for groups like Snow Man, SixStones, etc., and ジャにのちゃんねる, and the Gaming Room channel. Like I can't believe the abundance of Johnny's content we are actually getting for free on Youtube. When I remember what I had to go through way back then just to watch concerts, PVs, variety shows, Music Station appearances, and literally anything Johnny's related, now I just feel so spoiled!! Plus, Arashi songs being added on Spotify?! Now we just need that for the other groups please and thank you.
Anyways, kind of got sidetracked but as I was saying, I started to check out the new groups (which was thankfully not too hard because of the ABUNDANCE of Youtube videos they have) and I fell in love with Snow Man! ☃️☃️ They're just such a fun group! I especially like them because their style is the most modern and very different from usual Johnny's groups. They're also, in my opinion, the best dancers out of all the debuted Johnny's groups and as a dancer myself that really caught my attention. My favorites at the moment are Sakuma and Meme and Fukka but I literally love all of them and it's too hard to pick. It's really such a shame that they took so long to debut and now a lot of the members are almost 30 years old 😥. Despite that, I hope they'll stick around for a long, long, long, long, looooong time 🤞.
It's my first time falling in love with a group that has a lot of members (9). One thing that I'm not really used to and I find rather unfortunate is that not all the members get the same amount of attention and focus in terms of solo singing lines, or having the center position in dances, or camera time in music shows and PVs, etc. For Snow Man, the center is obviously Raoul but Meme gets a lot of attention and sometimes Hikaru, Koji, and Shoppi do as well. Honestly, it's really not as bad as the very early days of Kis-My-Ft2 or even HSJ but you can still kind of tell there's some inequality in the amount of focus each member gets. I really hope this gets better as the group becomes more established. I've seen it happen with HSJ, so I believe it'll be possible for Snow Man as well! I'm just so used to Arashi where every member gets the same amount of focus and that was one of the things I really liked about them.
As a fan of the older Johnny's groups, I'm also really, really, really liking a lot of the newer groups and I'm so excited to see how the company will continue growing. I'm already so proud that they're active on Youtube, IG, Twitter, and social media in general. If you told little me back in 2010, I would've never believed it 😂. While my faves are Arashi and now Snow Man, I love the Johnny's family as a whole, and there probably isn't a group I dislike. I especially love, love, love the interactions between different groups. I watched the Johnny's Festival stream and that was just pure gold!! But I won't get into that here since I can literally make a whole separate post about that LOL.
Anyways, this post has already gotten long enough so I should end it here.
TLDR: I like Arashi and Snow Man and pretty much all Johnny's groups. If you do too, feel free to add me as a friend! 😊